


Unconventional Dates

by igottoomuchwriting



Series: Dave lives and is a mechanic [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Dates, Dave can draw nothing but stick figures, Fluff, Klaus doesn't understand vehicles, M/M, drawing together, sweet baby boys, working on cars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-23 06:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21315610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igottoomuchwriting/pseuds/igottoomuchwriting
Summary: Klaus and Dave finally get to go on some dates! Or, at least, attempts are made
Relationships: Dave/Klaus Hargreeves
Series: Dave lives and is a mechanic [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1320980
Comments: 12
Kudos: 138





	Unconventional Dates

Klaus was so bored. 

Klaus and Dave both had today off so they had planned to spend the day with just the two of them. Then Dave got a text that his friend’s car was starting to freak out in his driveway and he didn’t know if he had the money to get a tow truck to take it to a mechanic. Dave was going to tell him that he was busy today, and Klaus really wanted him too. It had been awhile since he and Dave had some complete time to themselves or to do something as simple as going on a date.

Klaus also knows that Dave loves helping people and he would feel bad if he forced Dave leave a friend to fend for himself. Klaus had told Dave that he was okay if they went over there to fix his friends car because he couldn’t just sit there with his boyfriend while said man was worrying deep in the back of his mind.

So now he was sitting in the lawn of said friend’s yard with nothing to do. Staring at your muscular boyfriend in a dirty tank top can only entertain you for so long.

He should have brought something to do. Dave had said it was going to be quick because he had a feeling he knew what the problem was. Klaus realized when they got there that a mechanic’s definition for quick was different than his. 

Klaus let out a grown and threw himself onto the grass, spreading his arms and legs as far as they would go.

“You okay, babe?” Dave called.

“Just bored,” Klaus answered honestly.

“You didn’t have to come,” Dave called, guilt twisted deep in his voice. “I should have warned you that there wouldn’t be a lot to do.”

Why is he so  _ perfect _ .

“No, don’t worry!” Klaus cheered. He pushed himself up back on his arms so he could look Dave in the eyes. Dave gave him a small smile that Klaus knew meant he didn’t believe Klaus before turning back to look back at the car. 

Klaus watched with a sense of curiosity. When he was growing up, his dad didn’t own his own car. He would pay a driver and they would pick up the children when they had to go to a mission or they would walk. Klaus was pretty sure the only mode of transportation that Sir Reginald owned was a private jet for when they had missions overseas. Other than that, Klaus has never been around vehicles and never really knew what to do if they broke down.

It was a huge shock when he would visit Dave at work to either bring him food, tell him plans, or he just missed Dave’s face and there would be cars and parts everywhere. Dave worked in a small shop, so it was a mess, but there was something homey about it. There was always at least three cars in the shop and two outside and mechanics would be working or examining them constantly. This was a thing about adult life that Klaus never thought about or even heard about. The closest was Diego’s car, but Klaus was either too high or too tired to give a shit about what happened to Diego’s car.

Klaus walked over to Dave. Dave gave him a side glance but said nothing. He knew that sometimes Klaus would just walk around places and explore and during those times, he didn’t really want to be bothered.

“What are you checking?” Klaus asked as Dave pulled out some sort of metal stick and wiped it on the rag he had thrown over his shoulder.

“I’m checking the oil.”

“Oil?” Dave raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah? You know, the lubricant to keep the engine running?”

“Okay.” Obviously this was something that was common knowledge. Klaus wasn’t going to stand here and admit to his boyfriend—his boyfriend who is a mechanic—that he doesn’t know what the oil in a car is used for. 

“Klaus,” Dave reprimanded. Klaus winced. Of course Dave would be able to tell that he is trying to hide his ignorance. “Do you not know what oil is?”

“Of course I do!” he lied. “Obviously is something that the car….” Fuck. There was no way he was going to be able to pass this off.

“It’s okay if you don’t know.” Dave put the metal stick back where he had it and wiped off his hands as he turned towards Klaus. “I know you weren’t taught the correct curriculum growing up, and I  _ doubt  _ your Dad took the time to teach you about cars.”

Klaus looked down at the ground in defeat. “Okay, fine. I don’t know a thing about cars.”

“Do you want to learn?” Klaus glanced up at Dave. 

Dave’s face showed nothing but faith and care. He knew that being ignorant to subjects drove Klaus crazy but he also knew that Klaus would never ask someone to explain. He never wanted to come off as the dumb druggie who never went to school, even if that’s exactly what he is.

“Learn how much?” he cautiously asked.

“For now I can teach you how to change the oil. It’s not the only thing his car needs fixed, but it’s the best I can do right now.” Dave grabbed Klaus’s waist and gently pulled him closer. Klaus gratefully accepted the affection. “I don’t wanna overwhelm you with mumbo-jumbo.”

“I wouldn’t mind hearing you talk about mumbo-jumbo,” Klaus purred. Dave let out a bright laugh and Klaus beamed back. “But okay, you can teach me about oil.”

He trusted Dave. He knew that Dave wouldn’t mock him, judge him, or purposely extort the fact that he doesn’t know about cars or anything else. He knew that Klaus was raised vastly different and that he spent most of his adult life too high to remember the difference between left and right. 

“Great!” Dave pulled away from Klaus and turned back to the car with Klaus’s gaze following. “First you want to check the level of the oil. This here—” He points to where Klaus had watched him pull out the metal stick. “—is the dipstick. You take that out to check the levels, and you always want to do it when the car is still warm. Oil will condense once it’s cold so it’s harder to get an accurate measure.”

He pulled the dipstick out and wiped it off again and showed Klaus where the line was. He explained when it was too full, when it was too low, how the oil should look if it needs changed and how it should look when you just change and filter it through. Klaus took it all in with the eagerness that one could match to a toddler.

“We know the oil needs to be changed so now we need to locate the oil drain.”

“Is that when we get to roll under the car?” Klaus asked. He would always see Dave do that but Klaus never had any idea why he was under there. 

Dave beamed. “Yeah!” He motioned over to the plate that Klaus has seen a lot at Dave’s mechanic shop. “Can you grab me the creeper?”

“ _ That’s  _ what it’s called?” Klaus gaped. Dave let out a deep sigh as if the truth upset him.

“Yeah. I wish it wasn’t.”

“So every day, for five days a week, you work with a creeper?” Dave shot Klaus a look that truly showed the pain and suffering he felt from the joke and Klaus lost it.

“Can you please get it?” Dave finally pleaded. Klaus walked over to the creeper while still laughing at his stupid joke.

He rolled the creeper over to Dave and skipped behind it. Dave stopped the creeper while watching Klaus with a fond smile.

“A creeper for my favorite mechanic,” Klaus purred. Dave rolled his eyes in fake annoyance, but the smile on his face never left.

“Alright. This part will be hard to show you, as I have to go under the car. I’ll try to point out the catch while you…?” he trailed off, trying to think of something Klaus could do.

“I can just lay on the ground and look at what you’re pointing at?” 

“That should work.” Dave position the creeper for where it needed to go and carefully laid down. It took him a moment to find the catch.

It took a bit longer to drain the oil. Dave would have to roll back out from the car to help Klaus find the wrench he was looking for, or to roll out to help point out where the catch was and what he was doing from Klaus’s view. 

Klaus was actually enjoying himself. He never was interested in learning about cars, mathematics, engineering, anything like that — never mind the fact that he never focused on normal life with ghosts following him constantly or was too high to even remember his own name. Being with Dave and doing something that Dave enjoys doing really makes staring at the inside of a car much more enjoyable.

The rest of it went by quicker than Klaus thought it would. Soon enough, Dave was rolling out from the bottom of the car to finish changing the oil. He explained what to do next, walking Klaus through the steps thoroughly as if Klaus was taking over his job for the week and everything needed to be done to a certain standard. Klaus would never doubt that Dave would do anything less.

“And, that’s it!” Dave cheered. Klaus tried shaking as much leftover oil from the bottle into the car before turning back to Dave.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Yep!” Dave reached past Klaus to grab the cover to close the oil and gave him a quick kiss before he pulled back. “Oil was the only thing that I could fix without anything from the shop, so this should be good.”

“You do this stuff every day at work?” 

“Almost.” Klaus was shocked. He honestly thought being a mechanic would be a lot more heavy lifting. Of course, Klaus took a look over his boyfriend’s muscles and all of the car he and Dave didn’t even bother to look at today. Maybe it is harder.

“Well,” Klaus drew out. He pressed his body up against Dave’s, wrapping his arms around his neck with a smile. “I had a great time helping your buddy out, but I would  _ love  _ if we could go home and spend the rest of our day off alone.”

“I should be done here soon,” Dave agreed. He wrapped his arm around Klaus’s waist, leaning down and placing a kiss on his nose. “I just need to clean everything up and text my buddy.”

“And then we can continue our date at home?” The teasing in his tone was impossible to miss. “I have a few… ideas of what we could do.”

Dave smiled and pulled Klaus impossibly closer, leaning down so they were meer inches from kissing.

“Oh yeah?” he hummed. “And what would those ideas be?”

“I could show you how to draw!” Dave leaned back with a shocked look. It took all of Klaus’s power to not burst out laughing at the man. Rarely does he ever trick Dave into thinking something sexual, but when he does, it’s always entertaining.

“Oh… I, uh, I don’t think—That’s not a good idea, babe,” Dave stuttered out. Klaus let out a groan of annoyance.

“Why not!” he whined.

“Because I can barely draw anything more than a stick figure.”

“That’s why I want to teach you!” Dave heaved a deep breath. If his hands weren’t busy holding Klaus close to him, he would be trying to hide behind his hands. “Dave, please? You taught me how to change the oil in a car, so I want to return the favor.”

There were a few moments of silence that worried Klaus. Dave usually never gets this upset about something that Klaus wants to do. The only times Klaus has seen him this upset was when he started asking about some of his scars and got progressively more upset the more stories that he heard Klaus casually tell.

“Okay,” he finally heaved. “Okay, yeah. We can go home and draw.”

“We don’t have to,” Klaus immediately backtracked. He knew that he had a habit of being pushy until he got what he wanted after years of growing up with his father and trying to hide from the ghosts that hid from his vision everyday. He would push for drugs, push for alcohol, push for his Dad to get so mad that he stopped putting him in the mausoleum, push for  _ anything _ . He didn’t want to push Dave, though. “You obviously don’t want to, so we can easily go home and watch a movie. Or I wouldn’t be opposed to—”

“Klaus, stop,” Dave interrupted. “It’s okay. I would love for you to teach me to draw. I just haven’t drawn anything since middle school and I didn’t want you to make fun of me.”

“But I would never—” Klaus quickly tried defending before Dave interrupted him, this time with a kiss. 

“I know,” he said when they pulled away. “That’s why I’m saying it’s okay that you teach me how to draw.” Klaus smiled brightly. Dave actually trusted him to not hurt him with something he is obviously insecure about. His siblings wouldn’t even trust him with holding—well, anything. It was nice that he was trusted and was a safe spot for Dave.

“Alright, clean up sir.” Klaus placed another kiss on Dave’s lips before pulling away to go back to the grass. “I will entertain myself until we have to leave.”

\---

Klaus was anxiously running around the apartment, trying to tidy everything up. 

He and Dave had to push back their second date because as soon as they got home from fixing his friend’s car, Dave decided he had other plans. He was interested in something other than drawing with his boyfriend, and when has Klaus ever denied his boyfriend such a simple request?

They decided the next day off Dave had would be the best. Life got in the way even more when they realized they were out of many essentials they needed in the house, and with Peter working his sixth day in a row, it was up to Dave to go get the things that they needed.

Klaus had decided he would stay back so that he could set up all of the things they needed to draw, even if it would only take him a few seconds to do so. They weren’t doing anything extravagant anyway. All they needed was a piece of paper and a pencil.

Then Klaus started freaking out. He thought back to when he suggested the idea to Dave and how his boyfriend reacted. Klaus couldn’t get it out of his head that Dave has never reacted that negatively to anything Klaus suggested. Was Dave just doing this so that Klaus felt better? Did he actually want to do this?

Klaus had the thought of just putting it away, tell Dave that they didn’t have the supplies that they needed, distract him so that they don’t have to do this. He doesn’t want to make Dave do anything he would be uncomfortable with.

Before he could pick up the pencils to throw them back in the drawer, the front door swung open. Dave stumbled into the house, arms full of groceries and face bright red.

“Klaus, can you grab some of these?” he asked, holding out an arm. Klaus rushed over to quickly take the heavy load off of Dave’s arms. As soon as Dave set the groceries down in the kitchen, he let out a deep sigh of relief.

“Why do you always take it in one trip?” Klaus laughed. “You know you can do more than one trip.”

“Doing more than one trip is for losers.” Dave filled a cup up with water, gulping down half of it before continuing. “Did you take more than one trip when you were younger?”

“We never helped with groceries. Dad always hired someone to get groceries after my mom made the list.” Dave shot Klaus a confused look.

“Why didn’t she just go?”

“Daddy dearest wouldn’t let her leave the house. We honestly don’t know why he wouldn’t let her leave, but we assume it’s so that she couldn’t see how well children were treated by their  _ actual  _ parents and fight back to protect us.”

A horrified look morphed over Dave’s face. At this point, Klaus just thought it was amusing.

“Okay, we are talking about that more in the future. And taking your mom out for lunch because Jesus Christ, your Dad was a shit person.” 

Klaus was both amused and touched. He was touched because Dave offered to take his Mom—who was a robot—out to lunch without a second thought. He was also amused because the cursed to other religions ‘God’ because his Dad was such a shit person.

How did Klaus find this man?

“Do we want to put groceries away, or do we just want to start our date now?” Dave asked, walking back towards Klaus. 

Klaus took in a deep breath, staring at the living room with anxiety deep in his soul.

“Well, we could just… not do our date?” Klaus offered. Dave gave him a confused look.

“Do you not want to anymore?” 

“No! No, I do!” he reassured.

“Then why...?” he trailed off. Klaus let out a sigh.

“I thought you didn’t actually  _ want  _ to do this because you reacted negatively when I told you so I was thinking that we should just call off this ‘date’ and just do something else that you wanna do.” Klaus admitted. Dave pulled Klaus into a tight hug to which Klaus melted into.

“I only reacted negatively because I didn’t want to embarrass myself by drawing in front of my boyfriend who has  _ amazing  _ art. I didn’t mean to make you think that I didn’t actually want to do this date with you.”

“It’s not your fault,” Klaus mumbled. 

“Yes, Klaus, it  _ is  _ my fault,” Dave argued. He has been forcing Klaus to stop brushing off everything that Dave does that upsets him and making him understand that it is okay to say that something is Dave’s fault when it really is. Klaus still wasn’t comfortable with it, still afraid that if he blamed Dave for something, Dave would get mad and leave. “Just because I did it on accident does not mean I shouldn’t own up to my mistakes.”

“I know, I know.” Klaus looked Dave in the eyes, trying not to show that his heart definitely did  _ not  _ melt at the loving look that Dave was giving him. “Let’s just stop talking about it. I want to see what drawing skills you have!”

“I can tell you that it is zero,” Dave laughed. Klaus ignored him and made his way into the living room.

Klaus had pushed the table away from the couch, leaving room for Klaus and Dave to sit down on the floor.

“Is there anything that you want to draw?” Klaus asked as he set up the papers in front of them.

“A cat,” Dave said immediately. Klaus was shocked. He didn’t think that Dave would know what he wanted to draw right off the bat. Hell, when Klaus is in a mood to draw, he doesn’t know what he wants to draw.

“How in the fuck do you already know what you want to draw?” Klaus asked.

“Like I said, I’ve been excited for this date.”

“So excited that you already knew what you wanted to draw?”

“And I just really like cats,” Dave mumbled, face flushed red with embarrassment. Klaus’ heart melted at the sight. Klaus knew that at a glance, Dave was a hunk of meat that every person in the world would love to get a piece of, but Klaus was the one who got to see him on a daily basis. He was the one who got to see Dave flushed like this.

Before he could get carried away, Klaus changed to subject. “Okay, let’s get started!”

Attempting to ask Dave to draw a cat from a memory didn’t turn out that well. Dave had drawn multiple stick figure cats, and when Klaus got into his shading of his cat’s paws, drawn a small family. (Klaus had a sneaking suspicion that it was supposed to be him and Dave in the future which did not make Klaus want to cry.) Klaus setup Dave’s phone with a picture of a simple cartoon cat to use as a reference.

Everytime Klaus looked over at Dave, he was so focused on his drawing. There were a lot of faded lines where Dave tried to erase his mistakes, as well as smears of lead where he would run his hand over one spot multiple times. It wasn’t the cleanest drawing, and Klaus never expected that, but Dave was trying. He was trying as hard as he could to understand Klaus’ passion.

“Klaus!” Klaus snapped back to the present. 

“Yeah?”

“You okay?” Dave asked. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Are the ghosts bothering you?” There was no mockery, no hurtful tone in his voice. There was only love and concern, and  _ God.  _ Klaus has no idea how he was able to catch a man like this, someone who actually cared about him. 

“I’m great!” Klaus assured, for once being truthful. “I’m just admiring your drawing.”

Dave laughed and looked down at his cat, obviously insecure. 

“It’s, uh, it’s alright.”

“It’s great!” Klaus cheered. “It’s a start.” 

Klaus watched as Dave glanced from his paper to Klaus’, judgement in his eyes. Klaus didn’t know a lot about what to do when someone was beating themselves up. Usually Klaus was the one doing the self deprecating talk and Ben was the only one who would ever talk back.

“I’ve been drawing longer,” Klaus started.  _ They’ve been here longer than you, Klaus  _ he remembers Ben saying when Klaus actually tried getting better at rehab.  _ No one expects you to be better right away _ . “Rehab would get boring a lot, so I’ve had the time to dabble in doodles and paintings in order to fight my cravings. Don’t expect to be amazing right away.”

Dave stared at Klaus, studying his boyfriend before he let out a smile.

“You’re right. I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.” Klaus beamed. 

He leaned over and placed a kiss on Dave’s cheek, rewarding his boyfriend for fighting against those negative thoughts so easily.

“Let’s color this pussy,” Klaus cheered, falling back to his spot. Dave stared at him with a horrified look.

“Klaus, don’t say that!”

“Too late now, Davey!”

**Author's Note:**

> This has been almost completed in my docs since fucking April. Before I graduated high school. I am now almost done with my first semester of college and you all NOW get to read this. Fucking unacceptable.   
Do you guys want more Peter development? Cause I can totally do that. I'm fucking down.  
Also, ignore the fact that I took the fight story out of the timeline. It did not fit anything in the plot whatsoever so it's still there to be read, but pretend that the fight never happened in this story line.  
Also also, I'm v gay for a girl again. Been gay for her before, I'm getting sick of this shit, might just kahoot  
(I'm kidding)
> 
> Come talk to me on Tumblr!: igottoomuchwriting


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